Abstract

Gentrification refers to the changes that appear when wealthier people acquire property in low income and working class communities. My thesis uses decennial data sets from in the City of Chicago to examine some of these previously omitted or understudied aspects of this issue. Particular attention has been paid to each census tract’s gentrification situation and the socio-economic characteristics such as income level and other demographic characteristics.The study begins with statistical analysis, identifying gentrified census tracts in Chicago in different time periods. Classification models and stepwise discrinminant analysis are used to explain the interaction between the likelihood of gentrification and socio-economic characteristics. The intent is to discover the socio-economic characteristics are closely related to gentrification patterns in the city. The variables used in the study falls into three categories: social and economic data, such as median household income for each census tract, population data; such as the percentage of population who has a professional job; and the housing data, such as the occupied housing units. The result shows how gentrification has spread in Chicago from 1990 to 2000, and distinguishes which variables have the most significant influences on identifying gentrification. The model is evaluated by comparing the statistical results to the real world events. The most interesting part is to discover the evidence in real world that supports the results of the discriminate model.This study not only contributes to the literature and methodology involved in indentifying gentrification, but also provides a better understanding of the relationship between socio-economic characteristics and gentrification, and will assist making more appropriate policies to deal with the problems of gentrification.